The [Friday] Papers

"If you're the guy with the red mohawk and 'viper piercings' who attended the recent Megadeth/Motorhead concert at the Aragon Ballroom, there's a woman with blue hair and black biker boots who has something for you: A Baby," the Sun-Times reports.

"At least that's the woman's claim in a recent anonymous posting on Craigslist's 'Missed Connections' section."

Maybe it should have been posted in Made Connections!

"In the post, which has since been removed from the website, the woman says she's trying to track down the man who fathered her unborn child in a bathroom at the Aragon."

I don't want a child, but part of me wishes I could say I did it. And part of me wishes I was that child so I could make my future bandmates jealous.

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That's A Lotta Lysol

Cubs by 2018. MT: @Alderman_Moreno, ChicagosMayor, GovernorQuinn promise "disinfected" Chicago River by 2016. yfrog.com/oc3xwuvj

— Beachwood Reporter (@BeachwoodReport) April 12, 2012

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Democratic Principles
Pat Quinn and Rahm Emanuel found enough money to disinfect the Chicago River - and I support that plan - but where is Rahm's oft-proclaimed "fierce urgency of now" when it comes to the city's mentally ill, who are being abandoned at this very moment?

See The Fierce Urgency Of The Mentally Ill.

Trader Traitors
"Independent traders staged a walkout Friday of CME Group Inc. (CME) options on Eurodollar futures, protesting a large, privately negotiated trade a day earlier," Fox Business reports.

Maybe it would be more effective to bring a tent and camp in. Training opportunity for Occupy Chicago? Charge them top dollar!

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In other trading news, soft red winter wheat futures were called 1 to 2 cents per bushel lower Friday, Reuters reports.

I just wanted to say "soft red winter wheat futures."

And some craft brewers somewhere probably care.

They Were Here
"The Bevier Art Club recently traveled to Illinois to tour the Art Institute of Chicago," the Macon, Missouri Chronicle Herald reports.

"Eighteen students and their chaperones rode the train to Chicago to enjoy the art institute's collection which encompasses more than 5,000 years of human expression from cultures around the world."

Expression Silenced
"Police in Chicago are preparing to deploy controversial sound cannons against protesters at the G8/NATO Summit next month," Democracy Now reports.

"The so-called Long Range Acoustic Devices, or LRADs, emit painful and potentially harmful tones over long distances. The device was created for military use but it was deployed against protesters for the first time at the 2009 G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh.

"The American Civil Liberties Union later filed a lawsuit on behalf of a bystander, Karen Piper, who said she suffered permanent hearing loss, while the American Tinnitus Association said Pittsburgh protesters had been 'acoustically assaulted.' They compared the sound pressure to what armed forces might face from an Improvised Explosive Device."

Here's how Paul Meincke reported this development for ABC7 Chicago:

"Chicago Police are taking lessons learned in Pittsburgh to help control crowds for the upcoming NATO summit.

"Police plan to use what's called a long-range acoustic device to keep crowds from getting out of hand. ABC 7's Paul Meincke learned more about the device and what worked and didn't work in Pittsburgh."

Funny how what "works" is framed from the perspective of the police. How well did we painfully disable dissenters?! What lessons can we learn?!

How about this one, thrown in as an afterthought:

"I'm not gonna talk much about the LRAD because we are in litigation over it, but we did use it as a tool to get the message out," said Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Mike Huss.

Now we'll let the courts hash it out!

Extra Special
"This weekend marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and one Peoria man may have a piece of history relating to that tragic event - a copy of the Chicago Tribune from April 1912, KTAR reports.

That's the Peoria in Arizona, by the way.

Nice Try, UIC
Yeah, I'd like to think so, but experience tells me otherwise.

The Week In Chicago Rock
We have the video.

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The Beachwood Tip Line: Stylistically elemental.

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